The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare

In 1940, Winston Churchill and Ian Fleming form a clandestine combat organization for Britain's military that changes the course of World War II and prefigures the modern black ops unit through its unconventional and entirely ‘ungentlemanly’ fighting techniques against the Nazis.

  • Released:
  • Runtime: 120 minutes
  • Genre: Action, History, War
  • Stars: Henry Cavill, Eiza González, Alan Ritchson, Henry Golding, Henry Zaga, Alex Pettyfer, Cary Elwes, Hero Fiennes Tiffin, Babs Olusanmokun, Til Schweiger, Fisher Stevens, Danny Sapani, Freddie Fox, Carlos Bardem, Olaf Kayhan, Mert Dincer, Roger Snipes, Ethel von Brixham, Rory Kinnear, James Wilby
  • Director: Guy Ritchie
 Comments
  • eplur - 30 June 2024
    Great fun move!
    This movie is great, no denying that. But I wanted to write to highlight what deeply surprised me -- "Eiza González". She is hot, insanely pretty, I have followed her around of course in pictures, walking around with that jeans on, and what not. But man, this movie, she deserves an accolade. It's as if, the pretty face, all of a sudden became a savant of acting.

    Kudos to you, Eiza, I hope the right people recognize you as well as Guy Riche did.

    In terms of the movie itself, it's pretty good, reminds me of Inglorious Bastard. I don't know exactly why, maybe the pace, or the background music that that seems to come every now and then to remind you of the urgency. Go watch it, not many movies come about that is as entertaining as this to fart some humor in otherwise what is a dark subject.
  • TunezCottage - 18 June 2024
    The most incompetent competent movie out there
    This one's a doozy guys so strap in.

    This is the most competent incompetent movie I've seen in a while but it made me think of The Wire which is good. I talk about The Wire and how to actually write good dialogue below so keep an eye out for that.

    The best parts, to get it out of the way, are the score and the end credits. I also loved Eiza González performance. She knew exactly what she needed to do and knocked it out of the park.

    Everyone else, unfortunately, suffered from odd characterizations and extremely bad writing. It was as though they shot half of the first draft and everything else was made up on the spot because there are so many mistakes in this that I can't for the life of me imagine any other way this could've been made.

    First of all, let's start with just blatant errors because there are a lot. It's said that Lassen hunted bears in his home country of Denmark. Well, bears have been extinct there for roughly 4000-6000 years, so that's highly doubtful. Next, there's a part where a Swedish guy speaks to the crew to gauge whether they're really Swedish or not, when Alan Ritchson starts talking he should've known they're not within the first word because Ritchson doesn't know how to pronounce anything properly in this, even his accent is wrong. A Danish accent doesn't sound anything like that, just go watch some early Mads Mikkelsen movies next time around, or Nikolaj Coster-Waldau interviews.

    Aside from the blatant errors the script is all kinds of messed up. Henry Caville's character is portrayed so oddly at times. Like when he meets with M and Ian Fleming (don't even get me started on that), he's a... cleptomaniac? For no reason. It's never brought up again either. He steals a coat and a hat but that serves a practical use so it never factors into that aspect of the character.

    Now, the worst offender. The plot armor. Hoooo boy. We see about 600 nazis die in this movie and only one good guy gets hurt; shot in the shoulder no less. Throughout this whole movie I never worried about anyone or anything. I mean you know no one's in danger when Alan Ritchson is running around killing people at 300 feet away with a bow and arrow. That's another thing, these guys never miss. Not once. Alan Ritchson is shooting people that are like specks at distance with a bow and arrow and never once does he miss or screw up. We see thousands of bullets fired in this and nothing ever misses. Someone always dies when the good guys shoot. Urgh.

    This whole movie just frustrated every part of my being. The dialogue. Oh the dialogue. It's downright horrendous. First of all, Germans speaking to other Germans in English when it's established they can speak German. What the hell? Then there's the exposition. There's so much of it, and what's worse is that sometimes they tell us (the audience) things we already know... how do we know? Because we just watched it!

    TINY SPOILER BELOW (but it really won't ruin your viewing at all, the movie does that fine all by itself)

    There's a moment, right after they steal the boat where M calls Churchill to tell him about it and he goes: "Good news and bad news. Bad news: we didn't blow the boat up. Good news: we stole it instead." Thanks M, we saw that already. There's actually a moment in The Wire (season two) that does the same thing but in an actually clever way!

    Here's how they do it: in a scene prior we see this guy named Niko go out to the ghetto to try and get his cousin Ziggy's car back from a drug dealer. See, Ziggy owes this drug dealer named Cheese some money and to get his point across Cheese stole Ziggy's car. Instead of giving the car back, Cheese set it on fire and pushes the deadline on the payback of the money a week. So Niko goes out to tell Ziggy this. Now the predictable way of doing this would be to say "good news, bad news. Bad news: your car burned down. Good news: you have another week to pay Cheese back." That's what you expect. Instead what Niko says is: "Bad news: you still need to pay Cheese back but you got another week to do it. Good news: you can cancel your car insurance." THAT'S HOW YOU WRITE FRICKIN' DIALOGUE!